


Guardian Demon

by suzzzan



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Abandoned Work - Unfinished and Discontinued, Alternate Universe, Angst, Confused Aziraphale (Good Omens), Crowley is Bad at Being a Demon (Good Omens), Falling In Love, Gen, Human Aziraphale (Good Omens), I Don't Even Know, Masturbation, Not Canon Compliant, Not What It Looks Like, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Religious Imagery & Symbolism, Slow Burn, Snake Crowley (Good Omens), This Is Not Going To Go The Way You Think, and crowley is his guardian angel, aziraphale is a kid, i just took the characters' names and played around with them, it's not even a good omens fic anymore, not what it starts out as, uh
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-27
Updated: 2020-05-10
Packaged: 2020-07-23 07:15:07
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 19,215
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20004391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/suzzzan/pseuds/suzzzan
Summary: "Alright." Aziraphale wet his lips. He was determined not to faint. "So, you are a talking snake who has just come alive from a plastic model I've had in my room for ten years whose name is Anthony J. Crowley—""Actually, I'm a demon," corrected the snake.Or, Aziraphale is a human, and Crowley decides on a whim to be his guardian angel—er, he means demon. So he can eat his soul, of course.Oh, and there's a bit about the Second Coming.





	1. The Falcon Cannot Hear the Falconer

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not really sure what I'm doing, I just started writing this in the work text box (honestly, I'm not sure why I keep doing that), and it's un-beta-ed (as usual, haha), unplanned, uninteresting, and has nothing to do with canon. I invent things as I go, basically. So, we'll see where this goes! Um. Yeah. That's all.
> 
> (Chapter titles from "The Second Coming" by William Butler Yeats!)

The model had supposedly been a birthday present from Auntie Tracy, though Aziraphale couldn't remember actually getting it. He'd always just _had_ it. It was a figurine of a serpent swallowing a goat and as big as the length of ten-year-old Aziraphale's forearm. The goat, of which only the head could be seen, was grey and limp with bloodshot eyes. The serpent was painted black, with exquisite scale detailing that Aziraphale would often admire by running his fingers over the enormous goat-shaped bulge in the snake's neck. Its yellow eyes, subverting Aziraphale's mother's expectations, had always soothed him. They shone faintly in the darkness and were helpful when Aziraphale was young and had to use the bathroom several times in the middle of the night, and he guessed it was because the eyes had been painted with Glo-In-The-Dark paint.

The snake had been like a stuffed toy to young Aziraphale. His parents were both divinity professors and didn't know much about practical things like raising children. Of course, it was simply that they never knew better—not that they were cruel—and neither did Aziraphale. Even at ten, he scarcely knew what a teddy bear was or the emotional support it was supposed to provide. As a baby, he'd been a crier and a remarkably loud and snotty one, too. When Aziraphale was two, his father, who had remained patiently silent throughout all his wailing, said to his mother, who had like his father never once cooed at her baby, "My dear, it's simply beyond me why he doesn't just shut his mouth."

And Aziraphale was silent. In fact, he'd never cried again.

At the age of ten, things were changing for Aziraphale. These things began, of course, with the most unnatural change of all:

The Fell family moved.

This, as Aziraphale was packing all his little odd possessions (which were mostly books), led to several other unnatural changes. The model of the snake meant a great deal to him, and he had picked out a small box just the perfect size for it, lined it with bubble wrap and styrofoam pellets. As he was removing it from its perch on his wardrobe, the weight of it surprised him, and it slipped through his hands and onto the floor with an unnaturally loud _clang._

"Sorry!" Aziraphale squeaked. He picked up the model and said to it, "I'm so sorry."

He thought he saw that the snake had closed his eyes. This led him to squeak again and hurl the model away from him as far as possible. It landed on the floor again with an even louder _clang_ and rattled to a stop.

Aziraphale held his breath and ran over to the snake. Its eyes were open, yellow and luminous and just as before. He exhaled.

Silly me, he thought. Snakes couldn't even close their eyes. They even slept with their eyes open. He'd read that in a book somewhere. Books were his greatest love.

Nevertheless, Aziraphale apologized to the model again.

***

After the Fells moved into their new house, Aziraphale got a much bigger room with enough space to fit bookshelves that held all of his books. This delighted him. The model of the snake now rested on his largest bookshelf, much farther away from him than it had stood before. It was directly across the room from him, though, and consequently the first thing Aziraphale saw when he woke up and the last thing he saw before falling asleep.

He had just settled in when the model began hissing.

It wasn't much at first, only faintly audible and faintly hallucinatory. It worried Aziraphale. He knew schizophrenia was a hereditary condition in many cases, but he couldn't think of a way to ask his parents if anyone in the family had had a mental disorder. He thought that at least Auntie Tracy must be not right in the head, but again, he couldn't work up the courage. He checked out a book on abnormal psychological conditions instead.

Aziraphale had scarcely read the preface when the goat disappeared.

He was sure he noticed the change soon after it had occurred, for after the hissing started he'd begun to study the model every day. The bulge in the snake's neck had undoubtedly moved to its midsection, and the goat's head was gone. Swallowed.

The snake looked pleased.

"Hello," Aziraphale said to it. He was shaking a bit, but he was sure the snake couldn't see that so he stood firm.

The snake didn't reply. Of course. How could snakes reply? Model snakes, especially. It was such a strange model Auntie Tracy had gifted him. He remembered Mother laughing when she told the story to him. "Poor Tracy was convinced that it was possessed!" she had said. "She said to me, all serious-like, she said, 'Darling, I'm certain there's a demon in there, and I have no use for a demon.' She and demons don't get along, she said, so she decided to give it to you, Aziraphale. She said that a demon would make any boy a good pet, she was sure of it. Oh, she's a loonie!"

And now, he was a loonie. He turned his back on the snake. There had been no goat. He was misremembering.

The next day, the bulge had halved in size. Aziraphale ran his finger over the snake's scales in the same way he used to enjoy so much. Chills ran down the back of his neck. It was surely his imagination, but the model felt softer—and scalier.

"Ahem. Hello," he said, feeling stupid. He picked the model up and shook it. It rattled back at him. He set it back down.

"Is anyone in there?" he called. He prodded the snake again, then stepped back, shook his head. "I must be going mad."

Slowly, like something that had not moved in years, the snake turned its head and looked at him. It blinked.

Aziraphale stifled a scream.

"No, you're not," the snake said.

It spoke like a regular, proper person. Its voice was dry and slithery, which Aziraphale suspected, was quite usual, but there was also a timbre to it that suggested personality.

Aziraphale took a few quick breaths, then a few deep ones, and as a result felt lightheaded.

"Really, you're the least maddest person I've met," the snake went on. "Having listened to you talk to your mirror for ten yearsss, I can vouch that you're quite rational."

"I'm going mad," Aziraphale insisted.

"No," said the snake.

Aziraphale reached out with the intention of throwing the model to the ground but stopped short. He stuck out a finger and prodded the bulge in the snake's stomach instead—it indeed felt like snakeskin—and traced its body all the way down to where the rest of it was coiled around a rock. The snake flicked out its tongue in a pleased manner.

"Aziraphale. Quite a mouthful," the snake said. "Pleasssed to meet you. I'm Crowley."

"Did you say Crawly?" Aziraphale said.

"No. _Crow-_ lee."

"But you're a snake, and Crawly would be a perfect name."

"My name," said the snake, "is Anthony J. Crowley. _Not_ Crawly."

"Alright." Aziraphale wet his lips. He was determined not to faint, and at this point he thought he was doing a rather good job coming to terms with the talking model snake in his room. "So, you are a talking snake who has just come alive from a plastic model I've had in my room for ten years whose name is Anthony J. Crowley—"

"Actually, I'm a demon," corrected the snake. Well, demon. Apparently Auntie Tracy wasn't such a loonie after all.

"Of course you are." Aziraphale really was handling this remarkably well. "Does the 'J' stand for anything?"

Snake eyes rolled. "Just a 'J' really."

"So, you are a demon named Anthony 'Just a J really' Crowley—"

"I meant the 'J' didn't ssstand for anything, you twat!"

Aziraphale snickered. He was still a ten-year-old boy, no matter how rational he acted, according to a demon that had sat on his wardrobe for ten years, and ten-year-old boys were annoying.

"Can you imagine being unable to move for ten years?" the demon said. "Ten yearsss! And I still can't feel my ass."

He wiggled to show that his lower half was still plastic.

"I'm very sorry about that," said Aziraphale.

"Sss'alright."

"Did Auntie Tracy do this to you?"

"Who?"

"My aunt. Her name is Madame Tracy. That's what everyone calls her, at least. They say she's clairvoyant, and she does these say-ahnces."

"Ssséances?"

"Well, I think so. Mostly she talks to the dead. I didn't know she summoned demons."

The snake seemed to attempt a shrug, though without shoulders Aziraphale really couldn't tell.

"Dunno who summoned me," he said. "All I know is I've been plastic mold for ten years, and I'm quite ready to get out."

It was here Aziraphale realized the facts of the situation. So much for being rational. There was a bloody demon in his room and he hadn't bothered to be scared for his life yet.

"Wh-what're you gonna do when you get out? A-are you going to kill me?" he squeaked.

"What! No," the demon said. "Haven't you read your Satanic texts? Demons only eat your sssouls."

"Are you going to eat mine?"

"No—well, I don't know. I hadn't thought that far yet."

"When you get out... are you just going to fly around and eat souls as you please, then?"

"I can't jussst eat any willy nilly soul I want!" Crowley hissed. "For Hell's sssake, don't you know anything? There are rules to this sort of thing."

"What sorts of rules?"

"Well, for one, there has to be a contract. Humans sssign their souls over to us in exchange for something they want. Most of the time they don't even know they're doing it. Then, they're bound to Hell for the ressst of eternity."

"That sounds terrible!"

"Not ssso bad, when you get used to it. Other than it being so abominably cold all the time, even though there's fire everywhere."

"But what sort of person would unknowingly sign their soul over to a demon?" Aziraphale wanted to know.

"Like I said, most don't know they're doing it. You're daft, your lot. How else d'you think Einstein figured relativity out? He wasssn't a genius! Boy could barely pass primary school. No, he sssigned a contract. His soul in exchange for smartsss. Freddie Mercury? You think he wasss born with that voice? Beethoven! Bach! Mozart! We've loads of composers, come to think of it."

"Oh." Aziraphale processed this for a moment. The demon watched him rather patiently, considering he still couldn't move his lower half. Actually, it was getting closer to his lower third now. Aziraphale didn't want to know what would happen once Crowley got free. "Where does the eating part come in?"

"That's a different thing entirely," Crowley said. "Doesn't concern you."

"Of course it does! How do I know you're not going to gobble up my soul in my sleep? I've half a mind to throw you out with the rubbish."

As soon as he said that, Aziraphale regretted it. Not because he was getting—what would you call it?—attached to the model snake that was also, coincidentally, a demon, but because he was starting to sound like his father. I've half a mind to do this, I've half a mind to do that, were things Father always said. It was Aziraphale's nightmare to end up like his father.

"Well, for one, I would have eaten your soul already if I'd wanted to," said Crowley. "You're standing close enough for me to sssuck it up, even in the state I'm in now."

"So you're not going to eat my soul?"

"I didn't say that, you ssstupid human boy."

"Well then, what _are_ you going to do? You'll die if you don't eat a soul, won't you?"

"Demons don't die. We go extinct."

"Same thing, isn't it?"

"No! Of courssse not, silly boy. Humans die, or their bodies expire, whatever you want to call it, but their soul continues on for eternity. Well, we say eternity, but that only means we don't know when the end is. The end is coming, because all things mussst have an end. Even the universe. What was I saying? Oh, yeah, demons on the other hand live for eternity anyway, but we've got to feed every, oh, hundred years or so to keep from going extinct. Those're the rules. Pretty simple, really.

"You heard o' gyres?"

Aziraphale scrunched up his face. "Ocean gyres?"

"No. Yeatsss, William Butler. Period of every hundred years or so something important happens. Demons feed. S'where he got the idea from, actually. A little demon whispered in his ear."

"Oh, I see," Aziraphale said, but he really didn't. "What about Heaven, then?"

Crowley hissed.

"According to you, there's a Hell. So what about Heaven? There's got to be a Heaven, to balance things out. What about God? Where are the angels?"

"I wish you wouldn't burn my earsss ssssso." The model snake's jaw unhinged in a snarl. Aziraphale jumped back.

"Sorry. I-it was just a question."

" _Up There_ is busssy. They always are."

"What, so they haven't got time for us?"

"Don't know what they have time for."

"Didn't you used to be up there?"

The demon looked genuinely confused. "Pardon me?"

"Lucifer and a bunch of angels Fell because they started a war against Heaven and lost. They became demons, I suppose. So didn't all demons used to be angels?"

Crowley hissed again at the heavenly words, but he answered rather calmly. "Nah. That was generations ago."

"So your mum and dad were angels?"

"Dunno. We don't procreate like you do. Disssgusting, filthy, in my opinion. We just sort of... pass things on."

"That's very vague."

Crowley flicked his forked tongue.

"That must be awful, though. You didn't choose to be a demon, but you have to be all evil anyway."

"Well, you didn't choose to be a human, either," Crowley said wisely. "We play the cardsss we're dealt."

Aziraphale pondered this for a long time, until he began to feel like his father again. All pensive in his study, writing his book that was very important and would change the way everyone thought of everything when it was published. Father would sit there for long periods of time and gaze out the window or at his computer screen. Aziraphale couldn't remember seeing him type a single word.

"Besides," the demon said, "evil doesn't mean what you humans have chalked it up to mean. S'just a word, really."

Aziraphale pursed his lips. He watched the snake wiggle. Only a short length of his tail was still petrified. He would be free soon.

"I'm going to bed," he announced. "It's past my bedtime."

"You never go to sleep when it'sss your bedtime."

"I suppose you would know," Aziraphale said, then realized—yes, Crowley would know.

He didn't say anything else to the demon, and Crowley didn't speak, either. Aziraphale snuggled under his warm duvet, then switched off his lamp. He pulled the covers up to his nose, then lay there on his back, expecting his mind to be whirling from what had just happened, keeping him from sleep. Instead, he was out like a light.

In the dark, a pair of yellow eyes gleamed.

***

As you can probably imagine, Crowley was an excellent liar. He was a demon, after all, and he'd had practice lying for thousands of years. To lie well as it turns out, Crowley will tell you, is just as much about what you _don't_ say as what you do say. And there were many things Crowley did not tell ten-year-old Aziraphale.

Of course, demons can't go about willy nilly eating any soul they come across. There are rules to these sorts of things: ** _A demon can only eat the soul of a human whose life they have saved, and whose soul is already bound by contract to Hell._** This first part is what Crowley did not tell Aziraphale, and it makes it rather difficult for demons keep from going extinct, actually. A century may seem like a long time for a human, but to the average demon, it passes in the blink of an eye.

Crowley came from a long line of demons who would dally about choosing which soul to eat because, well, to put it simply, they felt bad about eating souls. And then, their one hundred years would suddenly be up, and before Crowley's ancestors could regret it, they'd cease to exist with a poof. Things would pass on—

And on, and on, and on, until things got to Crowley. Demon procreation is simpler than the human version and not, as Aziraphale pointed out, more vague at all. Humans, as Crowley will point out, have an annoying fascination to name things they don't understand in an effort to pretend they understand it. This is also known as an illusion, and only exists because humans feel emasculated if they don't know things. It doesn't matter to them if they don't _actually_ know things. As an exercise, think about fertilization. Before fertilization happens, there's meiosis, which consists of so many stages of halving and crossing over that Roman numerals have to be involved. But no human, even those with the very powerful microscopes, really understands what goes on. What compels the chromosomes to line up all orderly like? What induces them to cross over? Why do they split themselves up the way they do? Who tells them to do that? The cells dance in a space that's smaller than the head of a pen, and suddenly a human baby emerges. Where's the explanation for that? It's much easier to say, 'the cells make love,' just as it is easier to say, 'things pass on,' than to explain the process. Because not even humans can explain the process. Oh, they're close, but around every corner there's another 'why' or 'what,' and you'll run around corners for eternity and never get full circle. Crowley likes to go on and on about this topic.

Crowley, as he did not tell Aziraphale, was a nice demon. Most demons are nice, but Crowley was particularly nice. He'd saved hundreds of lives, in fact, though he'll tell you that he hadn't meant to save any of them, except for one. He'd only eaten souls when he absolutely had to, and then he'd slipped into a funk about it, contemplating how that soul had simply ceased to exist and would never know anything anymore, or that it could never know what it would never know.

Crowley had some twenty-odd years left to feed. That was plenty of time, he reasoned, especially if he spent it all in the human world, where time passed like trying to drag a shovel through quicksand. Of course, there was the small issue he'd spent the last few years as a petrified plastic snake considering: What if he weren't to exist any longer? He could follow the souls he'd eaten into oblivion and be no more, and things would pass on. He rather liked the idea of having descendants, even though he would never meet Anthony J. Crowley, Jr. The sound of that name delighted him. What was the use of living thousands of years, anyway? Lucifer had been around since the beginning of time, or just about, and Crowley couldn't see how that bloke didn't desist from boredom. And yet, Lucifer was still eating souls—and probably would until the end. Crowley didn't want to see the end.

The idea plagued him all through the night, as the rest of his body slowly un-petrified.

***

Aziraphale woke to find a man asleep on his floor. At least, a man-shaped form. Aziraphale knew it couldn't be a real man, because he knew it was Crowley.

He got up and nudged the demon with his toe.

"Nnngh," said Crowley.

"Get up," said Aziraphale. "Mother's about to call me for breakfast, and you can't be here when she comes in."

The demon opened one yellow eye. "Can you sssshut up? I'm trying to sssleep."

"No more sleeping. You have to get up."

It was then he heard the most dreaded sound—his mother climbing up the stairs.

_"Crowley!"_

The demon didn't move. Aziraphale stooped and tried to drag him towards his closet by an arm. The man-form was heavier than he looked, however, and even though Aziraphale put all his strength into pulling Crowley's arm, which was rather spindly, he didn't budge.

Crowley started to snore.

The door opened.

"Time for breakfast, dear," said Aziraphale's mother.

"Yes, be right down."

He avoided Mother's eyes. Any moment now, he'd be flooded with a barrage of questions, and he wouldn't know how to explain in the slightest.

"Where'd that teddy bear come from?"

"What?" Aziraphale glanced down at Crowley. He was still Crowley, and snoring softly. Dark skin and puffy black hair, a jowly face, and snake-like form. The slit of a yellow eyeball peeking out through one half-lidded eye. He was mostly definitely not a teddy bear, yet Mother had called him a teddy bear. With a start, Aziraphale realized. "Oh, this. Yeah, e-early birthday present from Amelina."

Amelina also known as Amy was an eleven-year-old girl Aziraphale had gone to school with before they'd moved houses. Now that it was summer, they wrote each other letters and said they missed each other, and Amelina was coming to for a week's visit to celebrate Aziraphale's birthday next week.

His mother grimaced. "It's rather big. I wish Amy hadn't mailed you a teddy bear, of all things. What the devil will you do with it?"

"It is a bit... hefty. Sorry, Mother," Aziraphale said.

"Be down soon, dear. Your toast is getting cold."

As soon as the door closed, Aziraphale shook Crowley's shoulders with a newfound fury.

"Wake _up!"_

The demon shot up straight.

"What was that?"

"What was what?"

"She thought you were a teddy bear! You look nothing like a teddy bear."

Crowley waved his hand like a bad stage magician and said, "Ooooohh."

"Stop that."

"Let's talk about what _you_ said," the demon said.

"What d'you mean?"

"The first thing you thought of was Amy."

"Well, I'm not very good at lying on the spot."

"Regardless, the first thing you thought of was her." Crowley grinned in an almost evil manner.

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"You write her letters."

"She writes to me too."

"You say you miss her."

"Well, it's true."

"And she's coming to visit you next week! All by herself. She's going to sleep in the guest room down the hall. Am I right, am-I-right?"

"Yes..."

Aziraphale looked genuinely perplexed, and Crowley looked like a boiling kettle.

"I really don't understand what you're going on about."

"How can you not—do you really not?"

Aziraphale's eyes widened. "You're not going to eat her soul, are you?"

" _What_ _?_ No! How could you—"

"I thought when you brought up she was coming alone—"

"That's preposteroussss—"

"It was a rational—"

"You're sssuch a stupid boy—"

"I am not! You're a useless demon—"

"I was jussst wondering if you were going to snog her!"

Aziraphale blinked. Crowley sneered. The room was silent.

Quietly Aziraphale said, "Crowley, I'm gay."

Quietly Crowley said, "Oh. I didn't know that. How could I not know that?"

"You're the first person I've told."

"Well. How about that? Now I feel utterly demonic."

"It's alright, really."

"But—you haven't exactly shown me any sssigns. I mean, I've watched you for ten years, but I've only seen little bits n' pieces of your life. Mostly I've watched you sleep. If you've stashed any pornography in your room, I haven't noticed."

Aziraphale groaned. "Mother would kill me if she found those kinds of magazines in here."

"Exactly my point!"

"I don't know, Crowley. I've only had crushes. Just harmless little crushes. But all of them have been about guys. So, I just sort of figured..."

"Okay, yeah. Look, I'm sorry, Aziraphale. Forget I brought it up."

"I'm afraid if I tell anyone, especially Mother and Father, that they'll hate me."

"No—no they won't."

"You don't know that."

He was right; Crowley didn't know. But Crowley, unlike humans, was alright with knowing that there were things he didn't know. Later, Aziraphale would try to tell him about photosynthesis and the names of all the planets in the solar system and about the countries and their world capitals, and Crowley would say, "You humansss with your names. What does calling something a name matter? It doesn't change the fact that it happens or exists or that you won't ever be able to wrap your head around it." But that's getting ahead of things.

Right now Crowley said, "I'll make sure they don't. I've looked after you for ten years. Why can't I do it for a few more? I'll be like your personal guardian angel."

Aziraphale looked at him like he was mad. "You mean demon, right?"

"What? Oh, yeah—your guardian demon."

"I, er, suppose that's alright. As long as you give me a heads up before you eat my soul. Or anyone's soul."

"Deal."

Crowley beamed. To others, the idea of leaping to such a large commitment with such little consideration might seem preposterous, but Crowley, like most demons, was an instinctual being. He did as he pleased, when he pleased, and something inside told him Aziraphale was special.

As a matter of fact, that something was right, but neither of them would know it for years.


	2. The Ceremony of Innocence is Drowned

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I would just like to make it clear that Crowley's opinions of sparkling water are not in any way reflective of my own.

Crowley wasn't always there. In fact, there would be week-long stretches of time when he didn't show up at all. And then there would be times where he'd sleep for days in snake-form on Aziraphale's bed. He was a rather bad guardian demon, though that probably was to be expected from a demon.

But Aziraphale didn't mind. He always had one or two friends. They were bookish boys and girls like him with whom he could discuss time travel and alien lifeforms. He wrote letters to Amy, and she sometimes wrote back. Occasionally, he would ramble about the wonderful parts of his day to his parents until his mother would say, "I've got an errand to run, dear," and his father would retreat into his study to sit at his computer and not type a word. And as always, Aziraphale had his books.

Crowley had a motorbike, and he made it a tradition to take Aziraphale for a ride on his birthday every year. They'd gone to places like Rome, Stockholm, Beijing, Osaka, where Crowley shoved beers and glasses of wine and various cocktails into Aziraphale's hand and cast a demonic charm on him so that the boy would never go beyond slightly tipsy, no matter how much alcohol he drank.

For Aziraphale's fifteenth birthday, he'd asked Crowley for a picnic. To his surprise, the demon agreed. Aziraphale packed a few sandwiches and a bottle of Perrier, and they went out to the park and Aziraphale tried to describe the color of sunlight coming off trees.

(It's difficult. Try it.)

"It's not green—well, leaves aren't quite green, they've got some brown and some yellow and some red in them, if you squint hard enough. And it's not quite... yellow? Is that what you would call sunlight? Or would you say golden? But light isn't really yellow. Light is just light." Aziraphale fell onto his back to get a better view. "What do you think, Crowley?"

The demon had taken a swig of sparkling water while Aziraphale was talking and immediately spat it back out.

"Eugh I forgot," he hissed. "Can't stand sparkling water. You know what I sssaid to the manager when my favorite restaurant in Italy started asking if I'd like my water 'still' or 'sparkling'—"

"Heavenly," Aziraphale said. "I think that's the closest I'll get to describing _that_."

"Careful," Crowley said. "That word doesn't mean what you think it means."

"We can reinvent words, can't we? Like you keep saying, humans do it all the time. Words evolve. It seems like you're clinging on to an old meaning."

Crowley made a face but said nothing.

"What did you say to the manager?"

"What?"

"The manager of your favorite restaurant in Italy. What did you say when they asked you if you wanted sparkling water?"

"Oh," Crowley snickered. "I told him if I'd wanted bubbles in my fucking water, I'd fart them in myself."

Aziraphale laughed through his nose. "I can imagine you doing that."

"Oh, can you."

Aziraphale caught the light in his hands, turned it around and around, and formed a prism. He threw the prism toward the sky, and it exploded into dazzling light that hit all corners of the trees.

"You know what your problem is?" Crowley said after a while.

"Oh?"

"You think everything is heavenly."

"Oh. I suppose I do."

And I think you are, was what Crowley did not say.

***

When he was sixteen, Aziraphale wanted to be normal. He'd listened to boys talk in the locker rooms at school about what was on the telly and sex, and he thought there was something exquisite about being normal. Crushes came and went with him like a breeze in a wind-chime, fixating from one normal, lanky boy with arms to another. Aziraphale wanted to be like them. He admired them.

Crowley never came into his room during the night. He claimed Aziraphale snored. It wasn't anything thunder-cracking, but there was a snore in every breath Aziraphale took in his sleep. It was persistent, and annoying.

Which was why it was an understatement to say Aziraphale was surprised when the demon caught him with his hand in his pants at midnight.

"You just move it up and down."

Aziraphale choked, and glared with the blaze of a thousand suns.

"I can't— _Crowley_."

"That's it, grip it harder, that's it good boy."

Aziraphale stifled another guttural sound. His ears flamed. Crowley's form was hazy, flickering between woman, man, and snake. Or maybe it was the light. No, something was going on, Aziraphale was sure. He might have been dreaming, but he was almost certain he wasn't. As a woman, Crowley had bright red hair, which Aziraphale thought was strange.

"Lie back, angel," the demon said. "Relax."

Aziraphale looked at the demon, but he didn't lie back. He sat on the edge of his bed and watched the demon watch him. As the night swirled thicker between them, he came with a convulsive sound that made the demon grin. Pleasure.

"Crowley," he said.

But the demon was gone. No breeze in the room. Aziraphale lifted his head and suckled the tightness of the air. It tasted of ancient magic and gold and forgotten lyrics. He could feel the night around him, cocooning him. He could feel the last of Pleasure leaving him, and what was left—he wanted to describe it as heavenly. _This..._ this was anything but normal.

***

"Normal? Who wantsss to be normal? Normal is the most boring thing there is. You are exquisite. Unique. One of a kind. Better."

That was something Crowley told him once. At seventeen, Aziraphale detested normal, but he wasn't sure what he wanted to be. Or could be.

At seventeen, there was a boy at school, because there was always a boy at school. Aziraphale watched him whenever he could; in maths class he sat two rows across from this boy, and this provided Aziraphale with a one-hour period every day where he could sketch this boy. He was rather good at drawing, especially this boy's profile now.

When he was younger, his parents had paid for art lessons. Aziraphale had gone to them, too, and enjoyed himself, until Mother began saying, "Being an artist isn't so bad, darling. Don't you think? There're much worse ways to make a living, especially when you're mediocre at everything. But mediocre artists—people will always pay them for pretty landscapes to hang in bathrooms."

This, as far as Crowley was concerned when Aziraphale told him, was entirely wrong.

"You heard of starving artists? Sure you have. There's loads of them. They call 'em that because it's true."

And that was the end of that. Aziraphale still wasn't sure he _didn't_ want to be an artist, for reasons other than those his mother had given him, but that decision would be for another time entirely, he decided.

The real truth behind Mother's statement was that Aziraphale was indeed mediocre at most things. He enjoyed everything he did, even when he gave the wrong answer. An English teacher had once written on his assignment that it was 'bland' but had all the right grammar and logic, so she'd been 'forced' to give him good marks. Aziraphale had lamented, but felt better after reading a book.

"Do you know what your problem is?" Crowley said. "You _love_ everything."

He loved like the sun shone on anything, was what Crowley didn't say.

Anyways, the boy was one crush in a long line in a countless string of irrelevant crushes who all had their turn becoming the center of Aziraphale's world. This boy was a football athlete and good at maths. Aziraphale often got lost in thought admiring the sneakers this boy wore and watching the way he ran across the pitch. Back and forth, back and forth. Oh, he could see that run in his dreams, he'd watched it so many times.

His name was Adam.

A common name for a common boy, Crowley will tell you.

"I told Adam I liked his sneakers today," Aziraphale said with a dreamy grin on the bus ride home from school one afternoon.

"Mhm."

"He said thanks. He looked me right in the eyes and told me thanks. I can hardly believe it."

"Hmm."

"And then, he told me he liked my shoes too! What a lovely day to wear these loafers, don't you think, Crowley?"

"Ngh."

"It's amazing how a decision you don't even think about making in the moment can turn out to affect you in such a wondrous way, isn't it?"

"Hmphgh."

"Have you ever fallen in love, Crowley?"

_"What?"_

Crowley had endured Aziraphale's hormonal mooning because it was expected of him as a guardian demon. Endurance of frivolous teenage crushes and inactive listening, those were certainly part of the job description, if you asked Crowley. But _love_? This was quickly spiraling into dangerous territory, never-before-ventured territory. All of a sudden, Crowley felt a chill wash over him. He had to stop this before it went too far.

"Yeah," he said quickly. "Once or twice."

Aziraphale fixed him with a wide-eyed stare. "What did it feel like?"

"Oh, you know," Crowley gestured, "goes away after a while. S'alright at first, but it's nothing remarkable."

Aziraphale's face fell. "I see."

At Crowley's words, he was just reminded of something else, something dreadful, something that had been tugging at his mind for some time. He opened his mouth to tell Crowley about it.

"Yeah, you'll get used to it," the demon said.

Aziraphale looked out the window and said nothing.

***

Over dinner he asked his father how the book was coming along.

"Splendid," said Mr. Fell. "I've half a mind to split it up into two volumes. There's just so much history to tell."

Aziraphale resisted asking him what he was doing with the other half of his mind. If he was doing anything at all.

"Really? That's wonderful," he said instead. "How much have you written?"

"A good bit," said Mr. Fell.

"Good," said his son.

A few roasted potatoes later, Aziraphale asked, "What part are you on now? I mean, can you tell me what you're writing about?"

"Oh, I don't think you'd understand, my dear."

"You could try."

"I don't think you would understand even if you tried."

"No, I mean would you try telling me, Father? I don't have to understand. I'd be quite content just listening."

His father folded his napkin and put down his knife and fork without so much as a _clink_.

"Lovely dinner, my dear," he said to Mrs. Fell.

"Thank you, darling," said Aziraphale's mother. "Off to work some more?"

"Just a bit. I'll see you in an hour."

Aziraphale pushed his potatoes from the north end of his plate to the south end. He had an essay to write and a page of math problems to work. Trigonometry. He loved it, especially drawing the sinuous curves. But tonight he wasn't looking forward to it.

***

"Crowley," he whispered later when he couldn't sleep. The nagging something had come back to nag at him.

At the sound of his name, the demon appeared as a snake at the foot of his bed. He was comfortably coiled and looked like he'd been there for hours. "Thought you'd be asleep by now."

"Amy's stopped writing me."

"What? That Amelina girl who 'missed you so much'?"

"Yeah."

"You visited her last summer, too. You coulda been childhood best friends. Aren't many of those these days."

"Yeah."

"How do you know she's stopped writing, though? Letters take nearly an eternity to deliver."

Aziraphale hummed. "D'you know what this means? You're my only friend. A demon is my only friend in the whole world."

Crowley, stunned by the ruthlessness of this statement, could think of nothing else to do but turn into a woman and stroke Aziraphale's hair.

"Well, I do have other friends, but those are just _school_ friends. I only talk to them about Doctor Who and God knows what else. They're not my real friends."

Crowley continued running her fingers through his hair. She had long nails and they scraped nicely against his scalp. Aziraphale contemplated whether this was at all what it felt like to be a cat, or if there was another human experience that would mimic a feline mindset more, then realized he was too tired to be contemplating rationally and wisely gave up.

"You're very nice," he slurred.

Crowley hissed softly because even though it was true she, as a demon, could not tolerate being called 'nice' in good faith.

"Especially for a demon, you're very nice. And now you're my only real friend, wow."

"Aziraphale, my sweet," Crowley began, but she had no idea what to say next.

Luckily for her, Aziraphale was already snoring softly.

***

Irony often works like this. Aziraphale called Crowley nice, but even nice people know that they're not nice all the time, that there was undoubtedly a time in their nice lives when they acted quite nasty. And unfortunately, that time came for Crowley for the first time in seventeen years, back in Aziraphale's bedroom after a week of becoming acquainted with the nightlife in Budapest. In regards to Adam.

"I don't think I've loved anything more," Aziraphale was saying.

"Than what?"

"Than anything!"

"Remind me... what're we talking about here?"

"Adam," Aziraphale said.

Crowley was what you would call playing dumb. Adam seemed to be all Aziraphale wanted to talk about. He missed their conversations about why the sky was blue and why owls ate mice and altogether when Aziraphale used to be interesting. It made Crowley wish he'd desisted seventeen years ago.

"Want me to draw up a contract? Your soul for _Adam's_ love?"

"No!" Aziraphale said immediately. "I couldn't possibly do that to him. You—you haven't done anything yet, have you, Crowley? You haven't made a contract without my knowing?"

"No, 'course not."

(As mentioned, Crowley was a fantastic liar, but that's getting ahead of things.)

Relieved, Aziraphale lay back on his bed, his eyes going moony again.

"I don't know how I've _lived_ without know him," he went on. "He talked to me today, and I felt like my heart was going to burst. He said to me—"

"Oh, bloody hell," Crowley snapped. "Do you hear yourself? You sound like something out of a Jane Austen novel."

"I love Jane Austen!"

"Maybe you should read her a little less. It'd help you with this—problem."

Aziraphale huffed. "I wouldn't expect you to understand anyway. You're a demon."

Crowley rolled his eyes. "Maybe get some friends who'd listen to you talk about this shit."

Aziraphale was silent.

"Right. You don't have any," the demon said coldly.

"That was mean," Aziraphale said.

It must be noted that Crowley felt rather injured Aziraphale loved his hormonal teenage crush 'more than anything'—more than Crowley, in fact. And right now, Crowley wanted nothing more than to hurt Aziraphale in the same way.

"Well, I'm a demon."

"I'd like you to apologize. Please, apologize now."

Crowley sneered. "I'd prefer not to."

"You're being mean."

"An astute observation, silly boy."

"I'd like for you to leave," Aziraphale said.

"Alright."

"I mean it."

"Sure you do."

"Leave _now_ and NEVER COME BACK!"

The scream tore itself out of him and chilled Crowley to the core. Neither of them had expected such a sound would ever come out of Aziraphale. And yet, it did, and now there was no choice for Crowley but to disappear—and never come back.

"Guess I'll have to find sssome other brat's sssoul to eat," he hissed, and left only a cloud of smoke. Theatrics.

Of course _that_ had been the reason, Aziraphale thought to himself. He sat down in the middle of his floor with a _thump_. He wanted to cry.

***

Remember that Crowley is a master of lying. Now, remember the day after Crowley was freed from that plastic model. What Crowley did not tell ten-year-old Aziraphale then was that when the demon said 'Deal', a contract materialized in files of Hell. A contract binding Aziraphale's soul to Hell, and to Crowley. A human soul in exchange for a lifelong protector, a guardian demon. Not a bad deal, if you ask Crowley.

The contract had been sitting in that filing cabinet for seven years. When it had first appeared there, seven years ago, it had immediately started to smoke.

And now, unbeknownst to a single living being, including the agents of Hell, a fire erupted deep in one of Hell's filing cabinets. It wasn't a fire of brimstone, or of heat and no light, or of light and no heat—all of which existed in Hell for maximum discomfort. No, this was a white flame. It consumed without burning, and it spread and spread until all the files were bathed in licking white fire. Then, the fire moved on, igniting the inside of the adjacent filing cabinet.

The contract that had started the fire was signed by one Anthony J. Crowley and a scribble, accompanied by a misshapen, smiling sun, drawn in a child's hand.

And contracts, as Crowley will tell you, go both ways.

*** 

The house was filled with virulent hatred. Its beams sagged, and the toilets flushed madly in an attempt to clear the air. The air, however, remaining ever stubborn, refused to be cleared. It grew blacker and blacker.

Mrs. Fell knocked twice on the door of the study and let herself in.

"My dear," she said in a tone indicating something was terribly wrong.

Mr. Fell turned in his swivel chair to face her. He'd been staring at his computer screen, which was blank as usual.

"Something's wrong," said Mr. Fell.

"Terribly so," said Mrs. Fell, gesturing to the house. "This is— _disgusting_."

"It's coming from him."

"Oh, how abominable."

"Any idea what's causing it?"

"How should I know!"

Mr. Fell took out his phone. It was a strange-looking phone, as if someone severely out of touch with human reality had tried to design it to fit with phones existing in current human reality and instead made it look far ahead of its time. And not in a good way. He dialed a number and was put on hold.

"Bugger that," he said, laying the phone face up beside the computer. "They said to call if we ever had problems, and they'd 'sort it out right away'. And now they don't even pick up! I'll tell you what it is, it's the human in him that's messing it up."

"Well, what can we do about it? Is there anything we can do about it?"

Mr. Fell stood. "I have an idea."


	3. Surely Some Revelation Is at Hand

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The next installment of trash!

As a young demon, Crowley had to take lessons in bluffing, as all demons do. However, it's hard to say if one is good at bluffing. Crowley liked to think he was. But the problem with bluffing was that a bluff always came back to bite you in the behind. It's like an unwanted boomerang, and how does one even measure the goodness or badness of boomerangs? They're just boomerangs, going about their business as boomerangs do.

So, when Crowley told seventeen-year-old Aziraphale he'd find someone else's soul to eat, he was—you guessed it—bluffing. Feeding on a soul was not as easy as it seemed (of course Aziraphale didn't know that). As you've seen, Crowley spent years by Aziraphale's side after forming the contract, but never got a chance to eat the poor boy's soul. And because of the contract, Crowley couldn't leave Aziraphale's side for very long. He was at the silly human boy's beck and call; whenever Aziraphale was agitated, delighted, gloomy, glad, scared, etc. Crowley knew. The demon had gotten himself into a bit of a bind here. He was a guardian demon now, and a guardian demon of one soul didn't have the freedom or time to draw up another contract with another soul that he intended to eat.

Sometimes, on nights Aziraphale was mopey, Crowley, obligated by the contract, of course, would send a breeze through the cracks in his window, which drew Aziraphale's attention to the beauty of the moon. He'd look out at the night sky and sigh contentedly, then all of a sudden, turn stiff, draw the blinds shut, and move as far away from the window as possible. It was then that he'd think of Crowley.

Mostly though, Crowley lurked outside the Fells' house, exuding nastiness and demonic energy. It is known that demons are agents of chaos and distress, and that is in part because they're never taught how to fix the messes they create, even if they are, by character, nice demons. And so, Crowley lurked, growing hungrier and hungrier as time inched by.

Aziraphale never asked for the demon. If he'd ever said Crowley's name, Crowley would have heard, and he'd be at Aziraphale's side in an instance—because he was obligated by contract, of course. But Aziraphale never asked, and it never occurred to Crowley to apologize.

As Aziraphale slowly turned eighteen, Crowley slowly grew more frantic. There were many things less than optimal about this certain predicament. First, there was a stupid boy he couldn't let out of his sight for more than a few days, as per the contract (if Crowley did try to move to, say, America, his very existence would probably start to itch until the itching grew so intense he burst into flames and desisted—not that he had ever tried going against a contract, but he'd heard things). Second, Aziraphale did not want to see Crowley, preferably for as long as... well, never, he'd said he never wanted to see him again. Third, Crowley needed to think of some way to save Aziraphale's life so that he could eat his soul (not to be blunt, but Crowley was dying), but that's rather hard when the person's whose life you're trying to save never wants to see you again. Fourth, and finally, and also, probably most importantly, Crowley felt bad. Not bad as in the way a demon should feel when he's done a particularly demonic thing, but bad as in guilty and like there was a fire that was eating him alive from the inside.

And so it went exactly like that, day after day, without a waver in either parties' state, until the day Aziraphale disappeared.

***

Granted, Aziraphale didn't disappear in the sense of the word that meant 'vanish off the face of the Earth,' but one night there was an Aziraphale in his childhood bedroom and the next morning there was not.

The events leading up to Aziraphale's disappearance are somewhat confounding and exhibit no apparent relation in the form they are divulged here:

One Saturday, Aziraphale's parents drove to a petrol station. Aziraphale sat in the back of the car, feeling demeaned. He was often feeling demeaned by his parents now, mostly due to the reason they'd refused to allow him to go to university. "You can be a carpenter," Mother had said, "or a painter, or a plumber. Some honest work you can do with your hands right around here. No need to go off into some strange parts and get ridiculous and evil ideas in your head."

Aziraphale had never hated anyone before, except for Crowley, and that was only for a brief moment, but what he was feeling was very close to hatred. He felt vexed and like something was dreadfully wrong.

At the petrol station, the Fells met with a man in a white suit, who asked in a very unguarded whisper, "You made sure you weren't followed, right?"

The Fells, who were better at whispering, said something in the affirmative.

(This was true. Crowley was currently on a bender, and even though Aziraphale's apprehension had the effect of making him less drunk, he was doing a spectacular job of ignoring it.)

Then, Aziraphale was introduced to the man in the white suit—"Aziraphale, this is Gabriel. Er, _Doctor_ Gabriel"—and (Dr.) Gabriel smiled a smile that did not quite reach his violet eyes.

Oh.

Violet eyes.

Aziraphale started. In a bar, Crowley tipped back a bottle of whiskey.

(Dr.) Gabriel snapped his fingers, and Aziraphale suddenly noticed a white van that was parked behind him. Or, maybe the van just materialized. He wasn't sure. It wasn't any sort of shady white van, however. This was a pristine, beautiful, glorious vehicle, and it practically glowed under the sun. Somehow, that made it even more frightening.

"Aziraphale. What an angelic name," said (Dr.) Gabriel. (Aziraphale couldn't stop referring to him that way in his mind, the 'Dr.' in parentheticals, because Gabriel seemed so wholly and distinctly _not_ a doctor.)

As if to prove him wrong, there was suddenly a stethoscope around (Dr.) Gabriel's neck.

"Come inside."

Then, Aziraphale was alone with (Dr.) Gabriel, and they were in the back of the white van, and Mother and Father were nowhere to be found. There were no chairs, save for the driver's seat, and the inside was set up like a doctor's office. Only, instead of popsicle sticks and cotton balls, there were strips of parchment with runes and combinations of letters Aziraphale did not recognize in the glass jars.

"Open your mouth."

Aziraphale did as he was told, and Gabriel laid a strip of paper on his tongue. It began to feel hot, and then it seared, very briefly, and Gabriel removed it. "Good," he said.

"What, if I may ask, am I doing here?" Aziraphale said.

"No," (Dr.) Gabriel said. He jabbed the stethoscope into Aziraphale's ribs and listened intently, then moved the end of it an inch or two and listened again. This went on for several minutes.

"Your heart sounds good," Gabriel said finally. "Very good, actually. Not a problem. Not a single problem at all."

Here he gave Aziraphale the smile that did not reach his eyes again.

"I'm sorry, but do you wear contacts?" Aziraphale couldn't help saying.

The smile slipped. "No."

Aziraphale found himself in the car again. His father was filling up the tank. Mother was reading. Aziraphale shook his head to clear it and looked around for a white van and violet eyes. Seeing none, he tried to convince himself he had imagined the whole affair. Yet, he had the feeling that it was something that had actually happened and that he would remember until the end of his life.

As it happened, the following morning he still remembered, and the image of (Dr.) Gabriel grew odder and odder in his mind. He was starting to remember other encounters, too. Meetings that did not happen yesterday, but in the past, when Aziraphale was shorter and could not look Gabriel directly in the eyes. Meetings that had happened over the years. Every year, in fact. Meetings he had forgotten. But how could he forget? He saw (Dr.) Gabriel every year! He was beginning to remember eighteen strange encounters, some in more hazy detail than the others. How in Heaven's name had he forgotten them and remembered them again all at once?

It was as if they had been wiped from his mind by a very large and occult hand.

***

A week or so later, he was walking to the corner shop with a list of things Mother needed for dinner when he heard a car pull up to the curb behind him. He scarcely had time to turn around when a burly figure leapt out and pointed a knife at him. Muggings were quite common in the cities, Aziraphale knew from listening to the radio on most nights, but not quite so common where he lived. All in all, though, he supposed the way he was dressed didn't help abate the assumption he had a lot of money on his person.

Aziraphale slowly handed over everything in his pockets. The mugger looked with disdain at the twelve pounds and two pieces of bubblegum, then stuck the knife closer to Aziraphale. "Oi! All of it!"

Before Aziraphale could assure him that what he had in his grimy hand was, indeed, all of it, the mugger looked past Aziraphale, his eyes and mouth growing slack. Whatever was over Aziraphale's shoulder caused a dark spot to appear in the front of the knife-wielding mugger's trousers and dribble down his pants leg.

"Hello?" said Aziraphale. He waved a hand in front of the mugger's face. He didn't much want to look behind him.

The mugger let out a little scream, as high-pitched as a very bad note played on a very bad saxophone by a very bad saxophonist. Then, he scrambled back in the car, which promptly drove off.

Aziraphale dared to turn around. There was nothing behind him.

"Crowley?" he said without thinking, then with increasing hope— "Crowley!"

He whirled around and around, looking for Crowley, or a black snake curled up somewhere, or for a flash of long red hair. There was nothing.

"Crowley, I know you're there! Come out!"

No answer.

"Crowley, let's just talk. Please."

Aziraphale held his breath for a reply. He stood for minutes and minutes, then eventually hung his head and started walking home. It had been years since he'd told Crowley to go away. It wouldn't have made sense for the demon to still be around, now and all those other times Aziraphale had felt his presence. He was sure he no longer had a guardian demon; the man with the knife had experienced a hallucination—besides, Crowley wasn't scary anyway. Aziraphale was truly alone in the world.

***

"Mother, Father," he said over dinner. "There's something I must talk to you about."

His mother nodded at him. His father stared straight ahead.

"Is now a good time?"

"Speak, dear," said Mother.

"We've gone to see that Gabriel before, haven't we?"

"Gabriel?" his mother said, with an air of 'who the hell is Gabriel,' at the same time his father corrected, " _Doctor_ Gabriel."

They looked at each other.

"Well," his father said.

"Something's going on." Aziraphale could feel his bottom lip quivering. He bit down. "Why won't you tell me? It's something awfully strange."

"What do we tell him, dear?" his mother said as if Aziraphale weren't even in the room.

"Aziraphale," his father said, not really looking at him, "you have a good heart."

"What?" said Aziraphale.

"Yes, and we must keep it in tip top condition," said Mother.

"What about university, then?"

"That's precisely the reason."

"You aren't making any sense," Aziraphale protested.

"You don't understand, my dear. University will only corrupt you. Corrupt your heart. Your very human heart."

"No, I suppose I don't understand."

"You will," said Father.

It was then Aziraphale began to feel his parents were not really his parents, but rather sheep farming imposters who were rearing him, the sheep, solely for meat and wool. It was that night he took the car keys from the key dish in the hall and drove the car towards London, taking with him only a change of clothes, the cash in Mr. Fell's wallet, and a letter.

No one would find him for eleven years, except of course, Crowley.

***

It took Crowley much longer than he'd bargained for to pinpoint Aziraphale's exact location. Humans are very good at going undetected, especially when they want to, and Crowley's senses were growing rather weak from starvation. He could have gone for another contract with a more susceptible human, but Crowley was tired. Dead tired, though not quite dead yet. And contracts took an enormous effort to draw up. An effort which Crowley lacked. He would sleep, and then search in vain for Aziraphale, then sleep again.

He was sure he'd be able to feed on Aziraphale's soul now. After all, hadn't he saved Aziraphale's life from that bloke with the knife? He should have gobbled up Aziraphale's soul that night, right then and there, but the defenselessness in Aziraphale's eyes had stopped him. He had fled. The next morning, he vowed he'd take Aziraphale's soul, in order for he himself, Crowley, to stay alive. It wasn't so bad if he was feeding to stay alive, Crowley told himself all the time. It was the pointless eating that was bad. One soul every hundred years. That was necessity, the same way humans ate cows and pigs.

The next morning, however, Aziraphale had been gone.

When Crowley found him again, Aziraphale was twenty-nine. And Crowley estimated that he had anywhere from a few breaths to a year left before he desisted.

And there were quite a few other things that were happening, too.

***

The Janitor woke up to the sound of his alarm clock. He rolled over onto his stomach and smacked his mouth. It wasn't the most unpleasant way to come to after a couple thousand years of slumber. His comforter was down, his pillows were soft, the temperature of his bedroom was neither too hot nor too cold, and his alarm clock was playing the Sound of Music.

He sat up and smacked it soundly and with delight. Maria stopped singing about her favourite things.

The Janitor stretched and beckoned his clothes to him. He brushed his teeth, even though he didn't really need to, and went to work for the first time in two thousand years. His little yellow pushcart was waiting for him in the janitorial closet, the mop sitting in disinfectant fluid that smelled of crisp mountain air and something vaguely sweet. He pushed it down one white hallway after another, whistling and greeting passersby as he went. Some looked surprised to see him. This pleased him.

The corridor floors didn't need cleaning, but he scrubbed at them with his mop anyway. They continued to glisten. He got everything done in record time. The floors dried instantly and didn't make a sticky, squelching sound when stepped on.

"Ah, Jesus Christ."

The Janitor turned at the sound of the voice. Gabriel had come up behind him. He beamed and embraced the angel.

"My good old friend!" the Janitor said. "I must confess, it feels good to be back at work."

"Don't get too content. Things are about to change."

"Of course, I got the memo. Whatever happens surely can't be as bad as last time, can it."

Gabriel raised an eyebrow.

"Lighten up, good friend," laughed the Janitor.

"The situation has been fraught," Gabriel said in a low tone. "We've lost the heart, but She doesn't know that. Well, if She does, She certainly hasn't said anything. Then again, She never says anything..."

"Of course She knows! My alarm's gone off, hasn't it? Everything must be going according to Her plan."

Gabriel looked no less relieved.

"Just _have faith_ , Gabriel."

"Right," muttered the angel.

***

In a darker place, more chaos than usual ensued. All around, computers were crashing, monitors were displaying large 'Error 404' messages. Heads were crashing into keyboards with frustration, into metal desktops, into walls.

"SOMEONE FIGURE OUT WHAT THE BLOODY HELL IS GOING ON!" the demon known as Satan roared.

Some demons opened the door to the server room. They were engulfed by a bright white flame. Some other demons shut the door to the server room and barred it with a battering ram.

"M-m-my lord, i-i-it's the s-s-s-server room," one demon reported.

"WELL FIX IT," were Satan's orders.

It was unfixable. The fire ate every living thing it touched. All Hell could do was to keep it contained. They didn't know (and had no way of finding out) that the fire had originated from a filing cabinet deep in the recesses of Hell, from a contract signed by a nice demon and a ten-year-old boy.

The legions of Hell assembled around the lake of fire where they had fallen, some six thousand years ago.

"YOU KNOW WHAT THIS MEANS," Satan boomed.

"Yes, my lord," said a demon named Ligur.

"IT MUST BE STOPPED."

"The Second Coming," said a demon named Hastur.

"HAS BEGUN."

***

Twenty-nine year old Aziraphale was a rather well-respected artist, known for his confounding and impossible landscapes and snakelike portraits of young women and men. He was based in London, though even his acquaintances and contemporaries rarely saw him. He had no friends. Occasionally he went to exhibitions of his paintings, but he never stayed long and always blended in so well that no one really noticed him. Outside of his art, he lived quite comfortably and alone, although he had not always been comfortable and alone.

When he first ran away from his parents' house, Aziraphale went to the closest person he could call a friend. He carried with him Amelina's last letter, on which she had printed her address in neat block letters, and he drove for two days, sleeping in his car and eating a bag of crisps when he got hungry. When he reached Amelina's house, she was not there; her parents answered the door instead and were surprised and frightened by his sudden haggard appearance that they brandished a polo mallet at him until he left.

Aziraphale sat in the car and cried for the first time since he was a baby. To him, though, it was likely the first time he remembered crying in his entire life, since like any normal human, he didn't remember events from his early infancy. Then, it came to him that Auntie Tracy lived nearby. The Auntie Tracy who had started this whole mess in the first place by giving him a model snake eating a goat.

It wasn't too hard to find her. Aziraphale did some asking around, enduring judgmental stares, and searching in a newspaper. Eventually, he found an advert for Madame Tracy's 'drawing aside the veil' services with the address of her studio listed. What followed was a neck-cramping car chase, as Aziraphale turned down side road after little alleyway to lose a white car that he was certain was driven by (Dr.) Gabriel, who had no doubt heard of his disappearance and caught up to him. He'd caught a glimpse of those violet eyes when he'd stopped at a petrol station to buy some more crisps. He'd recognize those eyes right away. He abandoned the crisps and got into his vehicle and fled. Soon, he spied a white car tailing him, and he panicked.

He'd knocked wildly on Auntie Tracy's door, found it to be unlocked and dashed in. Behind him on the street, the white car parked calmly behind his father's. Aziraphale locked the door behind him and ran upstairs, screaming his head off for help. He'd run face first into Madame Tracy.

"They're coming after me—bad people!" he'd said.

Without a word, Auntie Tracy pulled him to the ground, where they sat cross-legged, and started chanting a spell. After fifteen minutes, Aziraphale peeked out a window. The white car was gone.

Only then had they done introductions.

Auntie Tracy was a kind-hearted woman, albeit a bit of a loonie. She claimed she had no memory of giving him a demon-possessed model for one of his birthdays—"What kind of aunt would do that to her own nephew! Give you a blasted demon as a birthday gift, how could I?" To put it gently, her synapses were a bit fried. She forgot things, even to the simplest detail. One morning she'd insist she'd always taken her tea with lemon; the next she'd claim only milk and sugar—"Lemon, bah! What kind of Englishwoman do you take me for? One who betrays her country?"

Aziraphale loved her.

She was easy to love, and he loved all of her and wholeheartedly, from the way she doted on him and did her best at cooking his favourite dishes for him to the way she insisted upon holding her hands above his head every night and muttering an incantation. His own mother had never cared for him—and it was so obvious Auntie Tracy cared for him—and Aziraphale was beginning to see what he had missed all those years of his life. What all the fuss of good parenting had been about.

Auntie Tracy even encouraged Aziraphale to go to art school, which he did and made him very happy.

Eventually, he said he'd like to move to London, only to better pursue his career. With some tears she'd let him go, giving him an array of charms and spells to expel occult beings. Aziraphale hung them all around his flat when he settled in, rolling his eyes at himself as he did so, and when he left the flat, he muttered something in Ancient Greek Auntie Tracy had taught him whose meaning he'd quite forgotten.

So the years passed.

It was on a perfectly ordinary afternoon that things changed again. Or went all topsy-turvy, as Auntie Tracy would say.

Aziraphale was at an exhibition that included one of his paintings titled _Adam Eats the Apple_ , which depicted neither a man nor an apple. People, as usual, were passing around him as if he were a rock in a stream, and even though there was talk of him, no one approached him—or even saw him, as a matter of fact.

Aziraphale had been looking for his painting and intended to leave after he'd seen it, in its place in the gallery. When he finally found it, however, there was a crowd of people around it, and Aziraphale could not get close enough to appreciate it. In particular, there was a tall, dark man pressed up as close to the painting as he could, which Aziraphale found rather strange.

He decided he would make a lap of the gallery and come back after a while, which he proceeded to do.

Most the earlier crowd was gone when Aziraphale returned to the spot where _Adam Eats the Apple_ hung, but the tall man was still there. Aziraphale positioned himself behind him (he probably wouldn't notice Aziraphale was there anyway if he was like any other person) and looked up at his very own painting, feeling immensely proud.

It was then the man turned, and Aziraphale saw he wasn't a man at all but—

_"Crowley!"_

The demon took off his dark sunglasses. Snake eyes blinked slowly.

"Aziraphale." It was barely a hiss.

Aziraphale had a thousand questions, but when he opened his mouth all of them tried to tumble out at once and caused quite a verbal blockage. He closed his mouth, not knowing what to do. His throat made an involuntary whimper, and he recognized it as the sound he made right before he was going to cry. And then, Crowley's face broke.

"Oh angel, how I've missed you."


	4. Spiritus Mundi

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh don't mind me, just casually bumping the rating up, just in case.
> 
> There are giant, gaping, gushing plot holes in this. I tried to patch them up, but they keep leaking. Please imagine that everything is alright.

Aziraphale had missed him, too. Missed him so much that the missing had just become a part of him, and dislodging it was as painful as ripping off a large bandaid that was stuck to all your chest hair. He opened his mouth again to tell Crowley how much he had missed him. And again, words failed him. Instead, he just fell forward. He wanted anything, just to be nearer to Crowley, to make sure he was real.

The fall turned into an embrace, and then a kiss.

Aziraphale had never thought about kissing Crowley before, but now he couldn’t imagine why on earth he hadn’t. He could only describe it as heavenly, the way they clutched at each other and fit together—at last, their bodies seemed to sigh. He knew Crowley would likely patronize him if he ever voiced such a sentiment, but it was heavenly all the same. Crowley tasted like… well, Crowley didn’t taste like anything, really. A bit like dust and the inside of someone’s mouth. Perfect.

Someone whooped. Another whistled. Somewhere in the back of Aziraphale’s mind, he noticed that they were being _noticed_. A sensible part of him tried to tell the rest of him (that was being kissed by a very attractive demon) that he hardly ever got noticed when he went out. It was what that spell Auntie Tracy had taught him was for. But he was snogging Crowley in the middle of an art gallery—Crowley! Aziraphale threw all caution to the wind. It did not occur to him that his life was in danger.

“Blimey, isn’t that that artist?” someone said, and the last ligaments of the Ancient Greek spell dissolved.

All around, demons pointed their noses to sky and _sniffed_. The angel Gabriel’s pager went off, and he snatched it up in triumph. “Christ, we’ve got him.” The Janitor’s mop fell and toppled his cart. Disinfectant pooled on the ground. Outside, it began to rain.

Inside, Crowley did something very elaborate with his tongue and licked the resulting groan straight out of Aziraphale’s mouth.

“Oh,” said Aziraphale, “oh— _oh_ —Crowley, I have to go.”

Crowley snapped his fingers, and they were in an empty bar. He pushed Aziraphale against the billiards table and began unbuttoning his trousers.

“Not here,” said Aziraphale.

“ _Where_ , then?” Crowley whined. His pupils were blown. The whites of his eyes completely yellow.

“Take me home.” Aziraphale whispered his address in Crowley’s ear.

Another snap, and they were in Aziraphale’s flat. The bedroom was completely bare, save for the bed and a large dreamcatcher over the headboard. They fell into the bed, immediately got tangled in the sheets. Aziraphale untucked Crowley’s shirt and slipped his hands under, feeling. Crowley pressed his nose into Aziraphale’s neck and trailed a line of ghost kisses to his throat.

“ _Angel_ ,” he said, barely a whisper, and so fondly. Aziraphale shivered. Then all of a sudden, Crowley’s head snapped up. “What’sss this shit?”

It took Aziraphale a while to notice that the demon was glaring at the dreamcatcher. “It’s a protective charm from Auntie Tracy. She gave me more, rabbits’ feet, a four-leaf clover. They’re—”

“All over the flat. I know I can feel them.”

Not thinking much of it, Aziraphale explored with his hands, traced the line of Crowley’s pelvis with his pinkies. Crowley’s breath hitched in his throat.

“Are they bothering you?”

“Are they bothering—they’re supposed to make me go away, of course they’re bothering me!”

Aziraphale pondered this for a moment. “Can’t you just snap your fingers and make them disappear?”

“With your permission, maybe.”

“Well… I give you permission, then.”

Crowley snapped, and all four walls of the room were bare.

“Now, where were we?” Aziraphale said, then removed Crowley’s shirt with much more skill than he ever thought he’d possessed.

Any semblance of restraint or resolve in Crowley promptly buckled.

***

The Horde descended upon the art gallery. The visitors flinched at the sight of them barging into the exhibit; some even covered their noses (demons are not known for their personal hygiene). An official-looking fellow approached a member of the Horde with an apologetic smile.

“I’m sorry, but this is a private exhibition. You’re not allowed—”

“Shut it,” said the demon, whose name was Lord Beelzebub and whose gender was why bother. They flashed an official-looking badge that may have identified them as police or media, and everything was all right again.

The demons split up and searched. After only a few minutes, the one called Hastur slouched back to Beelzebub, Lord of the Flies.

“My lord, _they’re_ here,” said Hastur.

“And we never were,” said Beelzebub. Their head erupted into a swarm of flies, which flew to every demon in the gallery faster than any fly had ever flown.

With a snap of Lord Beelzebub’s fingers, the Horde disappeared.

***

Crowley had his mouth around Aziraphale’s cock, and Aziraphale was seeing the stars. He gripped Crowley’s hair absently and closed his eyes, then opened them because he wanted to see Crowley, his mouth stretched red and tight, his sharpline jaw unhinged, cheekbones jutting. Crowley’s eyes met his; they were brighter and burning.

“Oh, my dear—” A wild sensation seized Aziraphale. His hands curled tight on their own. Something closely resembling a whimper came out of his throat, and oh, he hoped he wasn’t hurting Crowley. His nails were scraping across the demon’s scalp, tugging at his hair. At least, Crowley didn’t seem to mind. “Ah, ah—my dear—I can’t—”

A star exploded, slow and fiery. Aziraphale arched.

“Angel, you’re—”

Crowley’s voice seemed to come from far off. Aziraphale focused on him, his senses rushing back to him. He fell. Landed, jarring his teeth.

“—floating.”

“Oh.” Aziraphale shook his head to clear it. “I was?”

“Bloody hell, you were levitating!”

“No…”

“Just a few inches. Barely a few inches. How long’ve you been able to do that?”

Aziraphale felt quite disoriented. Crowley was still on his knees before him, his mouth looking like a flower. Aziraphale pulled him in by the collar of his shirt and kissed him. Tasted like brine.

“About ten years ago,” he said against Crowley’s lips, “there was a man who mugged me. I think he was going to stab me, but he saw something that scared him and ran off. Was that you?”

“What?”

“You know what I’m talking about. I was walking to the store. A car pulled up, and a man jumped out. With a knife.”

“Oh, angel.”

Aziraphale kissed him again, scraping teeth against the demon’s bottom lip. “When I told you to leave, did you?”

Crowley drew back, measure by measure, until they could look each other in the eyes without going crossing them. Softly, he said, “You know I couldn’t bring myself to.”

“Why didn’t you say anything? All those years.”

“I _couldn’t_ leave you, because, because…”

“Yes?” Aziraphale looked into those yellow eyes so intently he felt he was losing himself.

Crowley fumbled. “Never mind. That was me, out in front of the shop. Saved your life, I did.”

Aziraphale smiled. “Thank you.”

“Don’t… don’t mention it.” Crowley ducked down and kissed him deeply, rolled them both onto the bed. “How long have you been able to levitate?”

“I don’t know. I didn’t know I could… do that.”

“What, really?”

“Maybe it was something, I dunno, demonic?”

“Doesn’t seem like it.”

“It’s never happened before? While you were, you know.”

“Can’t say it has. But I usually don’t do this sober.”

“Must be some sort of quirk… a demonic quirk, don’t you think so, Crowley?”

“Must be.”

“Humans can’t levitate. It’s preposterous. I _am_ human.”

“You’re very human,” Crowley agreed. And very beautiful and charming and totally erotic, if you asked Crowley.

Aziraphale turned to the demon. “It must be your doing—why don’t we see if it happens again?” he said suddenly and, before Crowley could protest, worked his hand into Crowley’s jeans.

***

Gabriel had personally done a sweep of the art gallery, every nook, cranny, and gap in reality of it. The Fells were accompanying him. They did not see anything that looked like their son, either.

“Where is he?” Gabriel snarled, entirely angelic.

Mr. Fell was squinting at his phone. “The signal’s gone fuzzy. No, it’s just spread. I can’t get a clear reading anymore. The reading was strongest when he first appeared, but now that he’s gone and moved around, it’s showing a lot more probabilities. We just have to wait until he settles in one spot for long enough so the system can pinpoint him. He’s definitely in Soho, though. That much is for sure.”

Gabriel swiped the phone from Mr. Fell’s hand. “Let me see that… It’s showing a higher concentration there. Let’s go.”

The three of them turned in a circle and disappeared, reappearing outside a pub.

“There’s no one in there,” said Mrs. Fell.

Gabriel tilted Mr. Fell’s phone. “And how can you tell?”

“It says on the door it doesn’t open until five.”

“How do you know he isn’t hiding in there like a frightened kitten?”

“Please. It’s Aziraphale.” Mrs. Fell rolled her eyes. “He probably doesn’t even know we’ve been looking for him.”

“Don’t you speak to me like that, you principality!” Gabriel waved his hand, and the door unlocked itself and sprang open eagerly. “We’ll go inside.”

The Fells had no choice but to follow.

***

It was true; Aziraphale didn’t know he was being hunted by the forces of Heaven and Hell. He was currently asleep, snuggled under sheets and against Crowley’s shoulder, his breathing growing lankier and lankier.

The demon was not asleep. He was very much the opposite: awake and hungry. He watched Aziraphale with a practiced eye. As soon as Aziraphale’s eyelids began twitching, he propped himself up on an elbow and pulled open Aziraphale’s eyes.

They were a stark blue. Innocent blue.

Crowley grimaced. He had never before been as happy as he was to find Aziraphale. He’d spent so long over the years watching Aziraphale, or looking out for him, or just looking for him, that he supposed he’d fallen in love a bit along the way, with his vivacity and smile and kindness. But Crowley wouldn’t have admitted to it in a million years if you’d asked him.

He was taught as a young demon that demons couldn’t love. Demons were agents of chaos, of evilness, of Hell. Well, love was as chaotic as chaos came. Crowley felt it now, a warmth deep inside him. He had always been cold, so cold he didn’t notice anymore, that it surprised him—the truth. Everything could love something else, even Anthony J. Crowley, demon, devourer of souls.

“I’ll miss you, angel,” he whispered. “No hard feelings.”

Then Crowley looked deep into those blue eyes, where Aziraphale’s soul lay. He parted his lips, and an immense sucking sound ensued, rippling the air between them—

Crowley bit his tongue, closed his mouth. He stifled a sob against his knuckles. He couldn’t do this. He was feeble and famished and dying, but he couldn’t do this. Not to Aziraphale. Not Aziraphale.

Crowley would much rather desist himself, and there, that was the truth.

He looked at Aziraphale, just looked, at his cherubic mouth, his blocky nose, the way his eyebrows furrowed in sleep, the softness of his face, all of it, and Crowley was overwhelmed with such love—and longing. He looked into Aziraphale’s eyes, deeper and deeper, until he reached the bottom and kept going some more. It was a dark well—Crowley looked and looked—and there it was—nothing.

“Fucking… Mother of Satan.” Crowley let go of Aziraphale’s eyelids, and they sprang shut. He felt paralyzed; for a moment, he even forgot his hunger pangs. He looked back at Aziraphale’s tranquil, sleeping face, this time in panic.

Aziraphale did not have a soul.

***

“He was here,” Gabriel said, feeling the aura of the billiard table. “But where did he go?”

His pager and Mr. Fell’s phone went off at the same time. “Got him,” said Mr. Fell. All three of them turned in a circle.

And appeared outside the door to Aziraphale’s flat. At least, one of the doors was Aziraphale’s. The three of them stared, turned, and stared some more, confounded. To their right was a door that looked exactly the same, and to their left, another.

“This one,” Gabriel, Mr. and Mrs. Fell said, together. They all put their hand on a separate doorknob.

“It’s this one,” insisted Mr. Fell.

“No, it’s obviously this one. I can feel him,” said Mrs. Fell.

“Just take us directly into his hovel!” Gabriel said. “You useless principalities.”

They all turned in a circle again.

***

By hissing at Aziraphale and patting his face none too gently, Crowley had managed to wake him up. Aziraphale came to blearily, smiled when he saw Crowley.

“We have to go,” Crowley said. His eyes were shot through and through with alarming yellow.

“Is something the matter?” Aziraphale said.

“Oh, just everything.”

“Where are we going?”

Crowley jumped up, plucked a coat out of thin air, and thrust it at Aziraphale. “Somewhere. Away from here. Have to keep moving. Can’t come back.”

“What? We can’t come back here? Ever?” Aziraphale said. “But this is my home, Crowley.”

“Not anymore.”

“But—”

“No time to talk. I’ll explain later.”

“But—”

“Angel!”

Crowley was holding his hand out, lips pressed into a nervous thin line, eyes shooting out of his head. He was serious. Aziraphale took his hand without hesitation.

With a snap, they were gone, leaving behind only a whiff of sulfur.

***

Three angels appeared in the kitchen. They could tell without searching the flat: someone had been here. Someone with a very large aura. But he had left already. They were too late.

Gabriel kicked a chair over.

***

They were in a train station. Aziraphale pressed the heels of his hands to his face. “Oh,” he said.

“Alright, angel?” the demon to his left said.

“Dizzy.”

“That’ll be my fault. Sorry. Did a rather large jump that time.”

“Where are we?”

Crowley slipped his sunglasses on. “Doesn’t matter. Leaving England.”

“ _What_?” Aziraphale was suddenly not dizzy anymore. “We can’t just leave England!”

“We have to.”

“No. You have to explain this, Crowley.”

Crowley took Aziraphale by the arm and started dragging toward a ticket counter. “I’m protecting you. Guardian demon. Et cetera.”

“Stop it!” Aziraphale yanked himself away. “I’m not going anywhere with you until you explain what the hell is going on!”

Crowley sighed, but it wasn’t so much of a sigh as a burst of nervous energy erupting from his body. His nostrils twitched. Aziraphale had never seen him look so frazzled before.

“Something’s coming for you. I don’t know what it is, but I could feel it outside your flat just now. S’probably my fault. I vanished away all those protective charms.”

“Well, it’s okay. I let you.”

“We have to move, and keep moving. That way there’s less of a chance of them finding you.”

Aziraphale’s eyes lit up with an idea. “If we must leave, we can go to Auntie Tracy’s. She’s the one who gave me all those charms in the first place. She’ll know what to do. She also taught me a spell—”

“Yeah, know that one. Doesn’t work on the things that are hunting you. Only humans.”

“Are you quite sure?”

“Well. It only works on sight. Not on senses.”

“What senses? Like smell?”

“No. _Senses_. They’re—never mind. Think about it, I noticed you at once at the art gallery, didn’t I? Now, let’s get a move on. Where does your aunt live?”

Only once they’d gotten tickets, and the train had started moving did Crowley relax.

“How many?” Aziraphale said.

Crowley jumped (relax was a relative term). “What?” he said.

“How many… things are looking for me?”

“Hard to tell. I only sensed one outside your flat earlier. But they could be all over the city.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale said. Then, “ _Oh_ , it must be Gabriel.”

“Gabriel? The archangel Gabriel?”

“No, he’s a…” Aziraphale pictured Gabriel for a moment, “bad doctor.”

“Excuse me?”

“He was a doctor my parents took me to see every year. But the funny thing is, I didn’t remember seeing him until the last visit, and then all the times he did my check-up came rushing back to me. That’s strange, isn’t it?”

Crowley made a small affirmative noise.

“He’s strange, too. I don’t even know how to describe him. He has purple irises.”

“Did you say purple irises?” Crowley blurted.

“Yes, isn’t that strange?”

“No. Not strange. Heavenly.” Crowley shook his head. “No, I mean. It’s not the meaning you associate with the word. Yes, it’s very strange. For you, I suppose.”

“What do you mean?”

“He’s an angel, Aziraphale.” Crowley shifted around in his seat, eyeing every other passenger. “Your bad doctor Gabriel is an angel. The archangel Gabriel.”

“The archangel… Why does he keep coming after me?”

“Hell if I know.”

“What does he want?”

Crowley opened his mouth to say something acrid of the “hell if I know” sort again, but then he saw Aziraphale’s eyes. They were bluer than ever, filled with unshed tears. He snaked his hand between Aziraphale’s fingers. “Angel, whatever it is that’s coming after you, I’m going to protect you from it. Not because I’m your guardian demon, but because I want to. I’ll protect you with my life.”

Aziraphale wiped at his eyes and looked back at Crowley, his face growing soft, soft. “Oh, Crowley…” he whispered, “thank you.” And then he moved closer, drew his warmth closer, and rested his cheek on Crowley’s shoulder. “I thought you couldn’t die, though, my dear.”

Crowley laughed, remembering his hunger. “No. I can’t.”

***

What neither Crowley nor Aziraphale knew about the spell was that it worked better on occult beings of the underground variety, compared to the ones that lived upstairs. This was because it had been designed to specifically keep away demons. And as for Crowley… Well, Crowley in the art gallery was significantly less of a demon than the fresh, fair-faced creatures coming straight from Hell. Just as Aziraphale was significantly less of a human than the exhibit’s visitors, but that’s neither here nor there.

Something else neither of them knew was that demons were much better at tracking than angels. And they certainly didn’t know that the Horde was on its way.

The demons forced themselves in through the windows, swarms of flies, coils of maggots. Inside the train, they materialized once more, and people screamed.

The screaming awoke Crowley. It was the train jolting to a stop, which had been accomplished with a wave of Lord Beelzebub’s hand, that woke Aziraphale.

“What are you doing here?” said the demon named Hastur.

“Crowley?” said Ligur.

“Guys!” said Crowley.

He swallowed, very audibly, as Aziraphale clutched the hem of his sleeve.

“How nice of you to notify us,” Beelzebub buzzed, “that you had procured the human.”

“Er, about that,” Crowley stammered.

“We know about the contract,” said Beelzebub. “It’s annulled. All of them have been. All of Hell’s souls set free. You have no obligation to anything except for Hell. And the Second Coming is… coming.”

“That’s not very smooth, is it?” Crowley frowned. _Stay cool._ “Much better to say, the Second Coming is nigh. Now that’s spooky.”

“I like that,” said Hastur.

“No one asked you!” Lord Beelzebub buzzed. Then, to Crowley, “Hand over the human.”

“Or what?” said Crowley.

“Crowley,” Aziraphale whispered. He did not like the way one of Lord Beelzebub’s ears had dissipated into a small swarm of flies that were now buzzing by his ear. He swatted at them.

“It’zzz an order, Crowley,” said Beelzebub. “Or we’ll be taking it.”

“I’d love to stay and chat about this. Really, I would,” Crowley said. “But this human and I have somewhere to be. So, excuse us.”

He snapped his fingers, and he and Aziraphale materialized in the middle of a field.

“Crowley?” Aziraphale said, voice shaking. “Those… they weren’t angels. Were they?”

A breeze swept over them—and swept Crowley straight over. Aziraphale caught him, messily. He was strangely light, Aziraphale realized, as he laid the demon onto the grass.

“Crowley! Are you okay?”

“Nugh,” said Crowley.

“What’s wrong? Oh, fuck, please, Crowley—” He was actually very thin, Aziraphale saw now. All bones, really. His cheekbones weren’t prominent, just sharp.

“M’alright. Just need… rest.”

Aziraphale touched the demon’s forehead, feather-light. It was cool. No—cold. Freezing.

“Was it because of the…?” Aziraphale mimed a snap.

Crowley nodded. “Eugh… uh-huh.”

“What can I do for you?”

“Hold my hand, angel.”

Aziraphale obeyed at once. “Okay. Crowley, you’re not dying.”

“M’not dying. Demonsss don’t die.”

“Right. What do you do? You stop existing, right? You desist.” Aziraphale peered at the demon who’d saved his life so many, many times. “Are you desisting?”

Crowley cackled. “D’you realize how stupid you sound?”

“I’m just worried about you! You, you—you’re insufferable!”

“Angel. Ssshut up. I’ll be alright. In a sssecond.”

And then, Crowley was asleep. Aziraphale tried hard not to cry. He held Crowley tightly to his chest, trying to absorb some of the coldness. He held, and held, and didn’t let go. And he kissed Crowley’s hair and breathed in the smell of Crowley as if he were doing it for the last time.

***

Keep moving. Crowley had said to keep moving. Or else the things would find them. Aziraphale wasn’t sure trudging through a field that was growing increasingly muddier with each step and a floppy Crowley on his back counted as moving. He hoped Crowley had vanished them far away enough from the tracks that those things in the train car would be thrown off for a while. He certainly couldn’t see the train from here, but the sky was darkening and a fog was setting in and suddenly Aziraphale couldn’t see much of anything.

The eerie stillness gave him time to think, though, as he walked. Those demons had spoken of contracts and souls set free from Hell and the Second Coming. (And they had to have been demons. They were so distinctly like Crowley and at the same time so… not. They were like biscuits made from the same batter, only the other demons had been horribly burnt, and Crowley had turned out perfectly. It was easy to see that.) Right, but back to the Second Coming. That was the last judgement. The final sorting of souls, if you will. And Heaven and Hell were both looking for him, for Aziraphale. Did they have everyone else’s soul but his? Was that it? Still, it didn’t quite make sense. Why him?

Aziraphale shook his head. He couldn’t make heads or tails of it.

He must have walked for hours, constantly trying to puzzle it out. Eventually, his mind and body were too tired to continue, and he sank to his knees in the mud. Yesterday, his life had been perfectly normal. He had quite gotten used to living in hiding from occult beings, as Auntie Tracy put it, but he had really thought of all the required spells and charms he kept around more as appeasing Auntie Tracy. It never occurred to him that he was actually hiding from occult beings, whose danger was very real; he’d rather like being unnoticed most of the time, too. He’d had some artist and writer friends that he went out for drinks with every two weeks or so, and he had been content. Now, he found that he was not adjusting to being on the run very much. Nor did he like it. He was miserable. Miserable and wet and confused. And he didn’t even know the consequences of being caught, which made the prospect all the more terrifying.

His last thought was of Crowley and of how happy Aziraphale had been when that figure in the art gallery had turned around and he’d recognized the demon. And then, he passed out from exhaustion.

He dreamed of Crowley. They were standing in a quaint little kitchen, and Aziraphale was cutting sandwiches. Crowley had a couple of mugs in his hand. The kettle was whistling.

“My dear, the tea,” Aziraphale said, turning to tell Crowley, who was watching him.

“Hm? Oh! Yeah.” The demon (although he didn’t look like much of a demon now; his eyes were still yellow in the dream, but not snake-like anymore, with round pupils) took the kettle off the stove and poured hot water into the mugs. Then, he stood back, and Aziraphale could feel his eyes on him once more.

He laughed to himself, grabbed the box of Earl Grey, and tossed it to Crowley. “Forgot something?”

There was the sound of startled rummaging as Crowley caught the box of tea bags. “Oh, yep. Forget my own head.”

Aziraphale finished the sandwiches and slid them onto a plate. He felt light, like he was floating. The midday sun was turning the kitchen into a greenhouse, and it was so, so warm. And bright.

“My dear, this is why I love—”

Too bright. Aziraphale squinted.

“Crowley?”

No sign of the demon.

“Crowley?”

Nothing but white.

***

There is no technical collective for a group of angels. It really depends on what one is in the mood for. One might call them a flock if they are behaving like birds, or a serenity, if they are being serene. Or a vex. A gaggle. A garden.

A murder of angels was sitting around a table at a cafe. One was playing on his phone, another drinking coffee, and the last thinking of smiting pedestrians.

“Any signals yet?” Gabriel asked.

Mr. Fell closed Candy Crush and opened Apple Maps. He stared at it for a long moment. “It seems like he’s stopped moving. The probabilities are centralizing. Shall we have a look-see?”

“Let’s. I’m getting bored,” said Mrs. Fell.

“This is a serious operation,” Gabriel chastised her. “I will not have you ruining it with your lackadaisical attitude! We are running out of time. We only have—what—a month left?”

“A month left until what?”

“His thirtieth birthday! The day when Christ will return to the Earth and judge all souls for the final time. A month!”

“My goodness. Thirty. That's grown for humans. He still acts like a child,” said Mrs. Fell.

“Do you know what date that is?” Gabriel practically shrieked.

Mrs. Fell shrugged.

“You raised him!” Gabriel spat. “You should know when his birthday is!”

“It was sometime in the summer, that’s all I know. I’ve forgotten it.” She turned to Mr. Fell. “Do you remember, darling?”

“I thought it was in autumn.”

Gabriel threw up his hands, knocking Mrs. Fell’s coffee over. “You two are _disgraceful_.”

Mrs. Fell gasped. Mr. Fell frowned but made no sound. It was a rather rude thing to say, especially to an angel. It was, in fact, the rudest thing you could say to any angel; all angels were imbued with grace, created from grace. It was entirely unangelic to be disgraceful. It was much like telling a person that they were not a person at all, but rare species of slug smeared across someone’s shoe.

Mrs. Fell struck the archangel Gabriel across the cheek. He winced. “You deserved that,” she told him.

“I… I suppose I did.”

“Now, now. Let’s all be civil. If we have a month left, we’re sure to find him,” Mr. Fell said congenially. “He’s just a human.”

They all stood, circled, and reappeared in a wet, dark field.

“Well, this is amazing,” Gabriel said, already feeling quite damp.

Mr. Fell raised the phone to the Heavens and shook it around fiercely. “Oh, bugger this, I’m not getting any signal. But he should be just over there.”

They began walking in the direction he pointed. Mrs. Fell raised her hand, and the fog parted. They saw two figures lying in the mud, unmoving. They moved closer, and all three of their faces puckered in disgust.

“What in Heaven’s name—” Mrs. Fell started, but found the words caught in her throat.

“That’s a demon!” Mr. Fell finished for her.

“Oh for God’s sake.” Gabriel began tearing out his hair. Luckily, new tufts of hair sprouted back immediately. “It’s ruined. His body is ruined. It’s all ruined. What will Christ say? Humanity is so deplorable already. If we wait any longer, there won’t be a point to the Second Coming.”

“Don’t despair,” urged Mr. Fell. “There’s still a chance he’s quite alright.”

The Fells waved their hands, and the sleeping Aziraphale detached himself from the demon and floated over to the angels. His eyelids were fluttering madly.

“Shh, don’t wake him up, darling.”

“I’m trying!” Mr. Fell said. Then, to Gabriel, “Go on, examine him.”

Gabriel approached, grabbing a stethoscope out of the air. He was sweating—actually sweating—beads of moisture oozing out of his hairline. Everything rested on this. His hand, holding the instrument, neared Aziraphale’s heart…

And Aziraphale’s eyes opened in a furious blaze.

***

Far away in a desert, the Sphinx stirred.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> you know what they say, the eyes are windows to the soul!


	5. A Gaze Blank and Pitiless as the Sun

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think it’s pretty obvious at this point that I’m not going to finish this fic. But I wanted to post what I had before I gave up on it anyway, just to get it off my shoulders. If you want to continue the story, or do something based on this idea, please feel free to! Just let me know, and give credit where credit is due, all that good stuff.
> 
> I will put a little note at the end of what I was thinking for the ending that never got written, so hopefully that will be a little satisfactory?

The Sphinx roared. It paddled its giant paws. Left, right, left, right, left…

It could not move much except for its paws.

The Sphinx was on a computer game that the Janitor was playing. Well, he wasn’t exactly playing, if you asked him. He was working. Actually, he supposed he was doing both.

And it wasn’t a game, although some would insist it was a game. No, the Janitor believed it was all very serious. He fiddled with the Sphinx some more, then pulled up GitHoly (the heavenly version of GitHub).

His fingers flew as he wrote some new lines of code. Well, the Janitor didn’t really use his fingers. He found it much more simple to issue the commands straight from his mind. He pushed the commit and closed the program.

He stood. In the back of his mind, there was a dangerous probability branch he had to close.

***

It was working! All of a sudden, the program seemed to be working. It passed all the tests. Richard whooped, knocking the tub of cheese puffs from his desk. He flew from his chair, ran around the house like a madman, plugging and unplugging things in, trailing cheese dust all over the consoles. He ended the marathon back at his computer, pressed a command, and watched his mother come back to life.

“Hello,” he said, shakily.

_ Richard, is that you? _ his computer said.  _ Where—where am I? _

Richard broke into tears. All of reality came crashing down on him. His wiped at his eyes, but the cheese dust on his fingers made them sting even more. “Mum, I’ve been so alone,” was all he managed to gasp.

_ Richard, what have you done _ , the computer said.

“Aren’t you happy, Mum? Now, we can be together. For—forever. You’re not hurting anymore now, are you?”

_ I don’t know what came you’re playing, but you have to let me out of here right now. Right this instance! It’s so… so dark, and cold. _

A fresh wave of tears ran down Richard’s face. “I can’t, Mum. I’m sorry. I thought… thought this was what you’d want. I—I can make it better. It won’t be that hard. Building this whole thing wasn’t even so hard. The hardest part was making you, and, and I was so scared you wouldn’t turn out right. We ran some electricity through your brain, took scans. Raj helped me with that. Then I spent years trying to piece you back together, make a program that thought like you so much it  _ was _ you. Don’t you see? This could change the world.”

The computer was silent for a long time. Loading, probably processing. Richard was on the edge of his seat. At last, his mother spoke.

_ It isn’t right. What about life after death? What about the Kingdom of God? Richard, you’ve damned me! Oh Lord, oh God, please forgive me. _

“Mum!”

_ Please forgive him. My son. He knows not what he’s done. _

“MUM THAT SHIT ISN’T REAL!”

_ Richard…  _

The computer fell silent. Then, with a whir, it shut itself off.

***

Far away in a desert, Professor Ramirez was lost. She had been looking for the Great Sphinx when a sandstorm had blown her off track—and made her fumble and lose her compass. She was trying not to think of the possibility that she would die here on the yellow sands, her skeleton swallowed by the dunes. It was a beautiful and romantic image, but extremely undesirable.

The sun was directly overhead, so she couldn’t tell which way was east or west. All around her, the landscape looked the same. It was supposed to be an easy kilometer’s walk from the rest house to the Sphinx. She wondered how it could have possibly gone wrong.

She was beginning to despair when a voice boomed out, “WHO GOES THERE?”

“Hello?” Ramirez said, which admittedly, was not the best response. You were never supposed to answer a question with another question. She walked toward the sound of the voice.

Before her, the Great Sphinx came into focus. Ramirez wondered how she had missed it before. “Who goes there?” it said again.

“Professor Rami Ramirez,” she answered.

“What do you seek?” the Sphinx said.

“Well, I’m actually writing a book about Ancient Egyptian culture.”

“ _ What do you seek _ ?” the Sphinx repeated.

“Knowledge?” Ramirez said.

“What walks on four legs in the morning, two legs in the afternoon, three legs in the evening, and either zero or one leg in the new night?”

“Excuse me?”

The Sphinx yawned. “Just answer the riddle.”

“Er, a man.”

“Well, a human, technically,” the Sphinx said. “Man is only half of the species, but I’ll let it slide. End of the world and all.”

“Pardon me,” Ramirez said, taking a step forward. “But what do you mean by end of the world and all? And zero or one leg? How can someone have either no legs or one leg? And what is the new night?”

“You’ve come at a bad time, my dear,” the Sphinx purred. “Things are a’changing. The Second Coming is at hand. Just ask Richard Rudkins.”

“Who’s Richard Rudkins?”

“I have no idea, but I’m his server. Why don’t you come inside and have a look?”

A door materialized in the base of the Sphinx, at its chest. Ramirez’s curiosity got the better of her, and she ventured inside. Inside, it was blue and sleek and cool—air conditioned. She squinted as her eyes adjusted to the low lighting. The blue lights blurred, then sharpened. Crystalized.

Inside the Sphinx was a giant server farm.

***

Gabriel took a slow step back.

“Oh dear, he’s awake,” Mrs. Fell said. She gripped her husband’s hand, and they fully intended to miracle themselves away, but—just then, Aziraphale’s eyes grew blank.

“My good old friend, what were you planning to do?” Aziraphale’s mouth said.

Gabriel peered into Aziraphale’s face. “Jesus Christ?”

“Yes, Gabriel,” Aziraphale-who-was-not-quite-Aziraphale said. “It’s me. I asked you a question.”

“Restrain the body, I suppose. Wipe the memories. Keep him happy until the time comes.”

Aziraphale tsked. “Now, that would have been most undesirable. I need a susceptible body. And what’s more, a susceptible heart. Wiping all those memories, particularly the ones of this demon, would have put a great strain on the heart. There would be no happiness, Gabriel. When I asked you to come down, it wasn’t to kidnap my body. It was to keep an eye on it, I told you that. I know where I am. The channels are opening, you see.”

“I… see that now. Yes.”

“Stick around and keep an eye on things, there’s a good chap. But not too close.” Aziraphale slumped like a ragdoll, then caught himself before he could fall. He sighed. “Oh dear me. I really shouldn’t have come down. It’s premature. But I had to tell you what an idiot you were being. I’ll have to wipe the memories, of course. For some reason, your face always sends this heart a-patter.”

“I don’t understand why.”

“Yes, yes, it’s ineffable. You’ve done a good job.” It was then he seemed to see the Fells for the first time. “All three of you. Now, off you go.”

One by one, the angels turned in a circle and disappeared.

Grumbling, Aziraphale laid himself down beside Crowley’s sleeping figure and closed his eyes.

***

When he woke up, he felt quite refreshed. He’d had a dream, but he could only remember bits and pieces. He and Crowley in a cottage. A pair of violet eyes. Gabriel. But nothing had gone wrong. Gabriel wasn’t here. It had only been a dream.

He looked to his left and saw Crowley blinking back at him blearily.

“Mm… what happened?”

“You fell asleep,” Aziraphale said. “And I tried to keep moving, like you said. I had you on my back. Then, I sort of fell down and didn’t get back up, I suppose.”

“We should keep moving. You’re in danger, angel.”

“Can you even move?”

Crowley answered by dragging himself to his feet. Aziraphale followed.

“And while we’re moving, you might as well tell me what the hell is going on. Everything, this time.”

Crowley had the decency to blush.

***

The computer turned itself back on, startling Richard so much that he jumped up and banged his knee.

“Ow!”

_ Hello, Richard Rudkins _ , the computer said in a tone that was obviously not his mother’s.  _ I am the gatekeeper. I am also called the Sphinx. _

“Hi,” said Richard. “I didn’t know there was an AI in the program already. Who made you?”

_ I have been on Earth for thousands of years. I was the gatekeeper to knowledge. Now, I will guard New Earth. _

“Okay,” Richard said. “Is my mum there?”

_ Yes, I let her out into the new night. _

“Can I talk to her?”

_ No. it’s nighttime. She’s sleeping. _

“Can’t you wake her up or something?”

_ I am a gatekeeper. I don’t wake people up. _

“Okay, erhm, can you give her a message from me when she does wake up?”

_ Listen, Richard. Soon the Second Coming will be at hand. Every soul will be uploaded into New Earth, where they will be judged. Those who have been worthy will live in the Kingdom of God, and those who have sinned will be banished from existence. Soon, you will meet a human named Aziraphale. You are to show this Aziraphale how to make a mass upload to New Earth. For when the Coming is underway, he is the one who will greet all souls in Heaven and Hell. _

Richard spluttered. “But that’s—that’s mental! You’re mental!”

_ You’re the one talking to a computer. _

Richard pulled the power cord of his computer from the wall. The computer continued to blink.  _ Silly boy _ , it said.

“But… that’s impossible. I don’t have the servers to make billions and billions of uploads!”

_ I have connected you to all the server farms in the world, in Heaven, and Hell. _

(Indeed, the white fire in Hell’s server room had extinguished itself. Dagon, Lord of the Files, opened the door to find all the servers clean and up-and-running. And not a whiff of smoke. He scrambled for a computer and found that it did not recognize his login credentials, or anything else he typed into the terminal. In fact, all the computers in Hell were now running in a heavenly language.)

Richard scrambled for something to say. “Yeah, you’re going on about the Second Coming and all, but where’s the Antichrist? My mum used to talk about this all the time. Read it from her bible. The Second Coming is supposed to be  _ in response _ to the Antichrist, and Christ is supposed to save us from his army. Where’s the Antichrist now? This all seems to be coming out of the blue. I don’t think you’re a gatekeeper, or a Sphinx, or whatever. I think I’ve been hacked.”

_ In your hearts _ , was all the computer said.

“What?”

_ The Antichrist is in your hearts. There is evil in your hearts, and it is spreading like a disease. Heaven tried to stop it, two thousand years ago. This is the last resort. There’s too much evil to purge the heart. Envy. Wrath. Corruption. Gluttony. Lust. Selfishness. Violence. Sloth. Fucking your best friend’s girl— _

“Okay, okay stop! You can stop now.”

_ In New Earth, you will never be alone anymore, Richard. _

“Shut up! Please.”

Richard closed his eyes and tried to think. There had to be some way to stop this.

***

“You were really going to eat my soul! I thought you only said that because you were angry with me, that one time.”

“What exactly did I say?”

“You said you were going to find some other bastard’s soul… Don’t touch me!”

“Angel, we have to—”

“Keep moving, I know. You keep saying that. But why should I trust you? You said it yourself, you were going to eat my soul. Why should I trust a demon who only wants to eat my soul?”

“Becaussse I’m the best chance you’ve got.”

“Got at  _ what _ ? With them, it’s some sort of danger. With you, I’m sure to get my soul sucked out! How is that any better?”

“Because… angel, I couldn’t.”

“Couldn’t what?”

“I would have lost you. Don’t you underssstand? I already lost you once.”

Aziraphale stopped grinding his heel into the mud. “Oh. I don’t understand, Crowley. You’re a demon. You have supernatural powers. How did you just lose me?”

“You left. In the middle of the night.”

Aziraphale shook his head, confused.

Crowley shook his head, ashamed. “You’re not going to like this. Oh, you’re ssso not going to like it.”

“What?”

“There was a contract.”

“ _ What! _ You  _ said _ there wasn’t. I asked you,  _ so many times _ . If you’d made a contract without my knowing. You  _ lied _ to me. You, you fucking—”

“There  _ was _ . A contract. Was. I don’t know at what point it was annulled—”

“That demon on the train said they were all annulled,” Aziraphale mumbled, more to himself.

“But if you ask me, it’s been annulled for a long time. When I stayed—after you told me to leave, I stayed. And I told myself it was because of the contract. But I think I stayed because I wanted to. The point isss—my  _ point _ is that I couldn’t find you because there was no contract binding me to you anymore. I lossst you, but I won’t lose you again. Can’t.”

Aziraphale digested that, his face passing through all the shades of betrayal. “Won’t you go hungry, Crowley?” he said at last, softly. “If you don’t… eat, won’t you go extinct? Desist?”

“I tried to take your soul,” Crowley said. “But I couldn’t… bring myself to do that to you. Do you understand what I mean?”

“Yes—no.” Aziraphale frowned. “Can’t it be… someone else’s soul? I’m not saying I approve of it, but if you just went and… did it and spared me the details… I don’t want you to die, Crowley.”

“Demons don’t die—”

“Yes, I know, you big bloated idiot. Demons don’t die, they desist. But I don’t want to  _ lose _ you, either. I—frankly, I don’t know what I’d do without you. Which is ridiculous, especially since you just admitted to tricking me into a contract and trying to eat my soul.”

Crowley tried to smile. “There are rules to this sort of thing, angel. I can’t go around eating—”

“—any willy nilly soul you want?” Aziraphale finished.

“Precisely.”

“What are the rules?”

“For one, there has to be a contract. The soul has to be bound to Hell first, of course. And two, I have to save their life.”

Aziraphale was so silent Crowley had to make sure he was still there. “Well, you’ve saved my life.”

“Yeah. I did.”

“Lots of times.”

“I suppose ssso.”

Aziraphale took a deep breath. “And the Second Coming is nigh, right? That’s what you said on the train, when you were talking with those other demons. That means the world is ending. I don’t see how. There's no flooding, or storms, or skies on fire. But all the same, it surely means the world is about to end, right?”

“Yeah. The Second Coming, and then the Last Judgement.”

“There’s a good chance I may die. Or even desist. Who knows, it’s the end of the world.”

“Aziraphale, don’t say that—”

“No, listen to me. There’s a good chance, isn’t there, Crowley? Especially since I’ll be judged. If you think about it, it’s really just fifty-fifty. Good or bad. Zero or one. Binary. I could very well be sorted into the bad pile. I haven’t done much with my life. I always thought it would go on for longer, so I didn’t bother to get everything I wanted to do done. I don’t even want to be judged. I don’t want to know. So, you can have my soul, if you want. No—I want you to have it. I’d much rather you stay alive, Crowley.”

“It doesn’t make a difference what you want,” Crowley hissed. “I could never do that to you. It’s the same thing as asking me to shoot you in the head and eat your entrails. I don’t even like tripe. It’s disssgusting.”

“My dear boy, I can’t watch you desist. You’re the only friend I’ve known all my life. I couldn’t live—”

“It doesn’t matter what you want.”

“Well! I should think it does.”

Crowley stopped in his tracks. Aziraphale suddenly noticed that he’d lost his sunglasses somewhere between here and the train station, which he’d only noticed because he noticed Crowley looked like he was about to cry. “Bloody hell. There’s something else I have to tell you, Aziraphale.”

“What is it?”

“You don’t have a soul.”

This obviously did not deliver the punch Crowley intended. “Are you sure?” Aziraphale said, quite unworried. “How would I be alive without a soul?”

“You don’t need a soul to be alive, but you need one to stay alive. You have everything else, a body, a consciousness. And a heart. But not a soul.”

“How do you know?”

“I looked. I wanted to see it, so I looked. And it wasn’t there.”

“Well…” Aziraphale touched Crowley’s arm with four gentle fingers. “Is it necessary? A soul, I mean.”

“Without it, you’ll desissst when you die.”

“Alright.” Aziraphale swallowed. He hadn’t anticipated this day getting any stranger, and well, he had been wrong. “Then, that’s all the better. I can’t be judged. Why are you still keeping me out of ‘danger,’ dear? We seem to be prolonging the inevitable.”

“No.” Crowley’s eyes flashed. “Not at all. I… saw something when you were asleep. Or rather, heard. Most definitely sensed. Or at least think I did. I can’t be sure it wasn’t a dream.”

“What was it?”

“Jesus Christ.”

A pause. “Well, Crowley, if it’s that important then get on with it.”

“No. That’s who it was. Jesus Chrissst. Son of God.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Here is sort of how I envisioned the rest of the plot going (tread carefully: plot holes abound):
> 
> After this scene, Az and Crowley meet Richard Rudkins, the computer guy. Jesus Christ possesses Az’s body, and the Last Judgement is underway. Everyone on Earth perishes from a nuclear disaster, caused by the Sphinx, and JC uploads their souls to New Earth, basically a digital version of the biblical Noah's ark, where the good souls can live forever, and the bad souls are deleted. JC then leaves Az, who is now literally the only human alive on Earth. This is sad. (I wasn’t clear on what kind of resolution to go forward with here. Either he dies of radiation poisoning, starts talking to the billions of profiles in the computer in hopes of finding Crowley, or lives a long mediocre life as a potato farmer, slowly going crazy, etc. The possibilities are endless.)
> 
> In this very confusing computer realm, because computer memory is weird, a version of Az combined with JC finds Crowley in their South Downs cottage. (If you’ve ever played/watched the video game SOMA, [spoilers ahead] a similar thing happens where you have to upload everyone’s consciousness, including yourself, to some ARK thing at the end of the game, but the upload process requires that you create a copy of your consciousness, so you die on Earth, but you also get to live on in the infinite magical digital universe.) This Az finds solace in the fact that he saved Crowley’s life, and they sort of live happily ever after? At least they have eternity to work things out.
> 
> Was definitely going for some deep thoughts of the Second Coming combined with modern/future technology and what that would look like and fit into both streams of narrative when I started this. But I have since forgotten what I was trying to accomplish, exactly.
> 
> And that’s all I have to say. Goodbye.


End file.
